AFRICOM and the Threat to China’s National Energy Security

The Washington-led decision by NATO to bomb Gaddafi’s Libya into
submission over recent months, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of
at least $1 billion, has little if anything to do with what the Obama
Administration claims was a mission to “protect innocent civilians.” In
reality it is part of a larger strategic assault by NATO and by the
Pentagon in particular to entirely control China’s economic achilles
heel, namely China’s strategic dependence on large volumes of imported
crude oil and gas. Today China is the world’s second largest imported of
oil after the United States and the gap is rapidly closing.

If we take a careful look at a map of Africa and also look at the
African organization of the new Pentagon Africa Command—AFRICOM—the
pattern that emerges is a careful strategy of controlling one of China’s
most strategically important oil and raw materials sources.